Review: Broforce

Broforce is a game that original slipped under my radar. At first glance it seems to be a rather primitive game with few redeeming features. All it took was one Steam sale and several hours of play time to prove that first glance was misinformed though I would add that it’s not all rose petals and bullets.

Broforce, for those who were like I was so recently, is a side scrolling shoot-em-up that initially makes me think of Contra. This is due to the fact that Contra had two “Bro” style characters, the screen always scrolled to the right, and your job was to shoot everything in sight. Story was a secondary consideration and in this Broforce is alike. The story to Broforce is near non-existent and essentially consists of your team of Bros killing everything in the fashion of the action movies the characters are based from.

In Contra, you were able to obtain different an unusual weapons by shooting the flying pods that appeared in each level. Broforce uses a completely different an rather unique way to give you differing options. You start with a single Bro, Rambro, and in each level there are several cages filled with prisoners of war. As you rescue more and more of these, you will occasionally unlock and turn into these new Bros. There are over 30 Bros as of this post and if history continues to repeat itself it’s likely that there will be a few more Bros released before they turn the devs turn their attention toward a new game.

The real joy in this game came from playing with three of my friends in online multiplayer. The game is so chaotic due to the damage done to the destructible environments from four gun toting (most of the time) players shooting at everything on screen. It didn’t take all that long to beat, probably roughly 4-5 hours but it was a riot all the way through with more than one burst of raucous laughter resulting from the death of one or more of us.

There were a few problems along the way. We ran into some lag issues occasionally which were automatic death due to the twitchy nature of this game. We also ran into several bugged levels, generally the “extra” levels that would unlock extra items in the main levels. The first one introduced worked perfectly, unlocking ammo crates for the remainder of the game. The second one unlocked RC Bomb cars and while technically it worked, after completing it the reward screen would cut off early and throw you back into the beginning of the level. We found it would loop like that until you entered the pause menu and returned to the main level selection. The third one we gave up on as there didn’t seem to be a way to actually complete it with the characters we had unlocked at the time. Since you are provided with a random Bro upon each death or level start there was no way to tell if we were going to be able to complete the level in anything approaching a reasonable timeframe. After that point, we just ignored those levels whenever they appeared.

Even with those glitches I would heartily recommend this game to any group of friends who might want to play it. It was a fun romp and well worth the reduced price I paid for the four pack.

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